Major interruptions have been occurring this week at car dealerships around North America.
On Wednesday, there were two cyberattacks that targeted CDK Global, a firm that supplies software to thousands of car dealers in the United States and Canada. This resulted in an outage that affected numerous of their operations on Friday.
This might result in lengthy wait times at dealerships or handwritten vehicle orders for potential purchasers, with no end in sight. What you should know is as follows.
CDK Global: What is it?
In the car sales sector, CDK Global is a significant player. The company is situated in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, not far from Chicago. It offers dealers software technology to aid with daily operations, such as making car sales, financing, insurance, and repairs easier.
The company claims that CDK provides services to over 15,000 retail locations in North America. It was unclear at first whether this week’s cyberattacks affected any of these places.
What took place this week?
A representative for CDK, Lisa Finney, stated on Wednesday that the business is “actively investigating a cyber-incident” and that, as a precaution, it shut down all of its systems.
According to a prepared statement from Finney, CDK “performed extensive testing,” sought advice from outside experts, and restored its main DMS and Digital Retailing capabilities by the afternoon.
Another “cyber incident” occurred at CDK on Wednesday night, according to an update from Finney the next day. “We’re still working hard to restore our services and get our dealers operating normally as soon as possible,” the spokesperson stated.
It’s still unclear when that will happen. As of Friday morning, “we do not have an estimated time frame for resolution—and therefore our dealer systems will not be available, likely for several days,” according to a recorded message from CDK on a hotline outlining updates for its clients.
Additionally, it stated that customer service assistance lines are still down.
The notice also mentioned that the business was aware of “bad actors” who pretended to be CDK affiliates or members in an effort to contact clients in order to get access to the system.
Employers were advised to exercise caution while facing phishing attempts.
Do the affected dealerships continue to sell vehicles?
Confirmation was received from a number of significant automakers on Friday that although the CDK outage had affected some of their dealers, sales were still ongoing.
These businesses included Stellantis, Ford, and BMW.
A Stellantis representative stated that several dealerships have shifted to using manual procedures in order to service consumers in light of the current circumstances. This also applies to handwriting orders.
Laptops 1000According to a Ford representative, “some delays and inconveniences at some dealers and for some customers” could result from the outage.
Nonetheless, a lot of Ford and Lincoln consumers continue to receive sales and servicing assistance from dealerships via other channels.
Customer privacy is obviously a major concern, given the lack of clarity around the breaches and the information that may have been compromised this week.
Dealers are very committed to protecting their customer information, and they are actively seeking information from CDK to determine the nature and scope of the cyber incident so they can respond appropriately, according to a statement on Friday by Mike Stanton, president and CEO of the National Automobile Dealers Association.
